


Evening Shadow

by happyaspie



Series: Tony Stark is a Good Mentor [55]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Awesome Pepper Potts, Bad Decisions, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, He Just Gets Excited, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker is a Mess, Peter is a Little Shit, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark is a Good Mentor, Tony Stark is trying his best, not on purpose though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyaspie/pseuds/happyaspie
Summary: Peter finds a pair of handcuffs in Tony's lab and without a second of thought decides that the best course of action is to immediately attach himself to his mentor's arm...  Except he had no idea that there wasn't a key... or that they were unbreakable...It ends up being a very long evening...
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Tony Stark is a Good Mentor [55]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1397362
Comments: 28
Kudos: 314





	Evening Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to [TheDisneyOutsider](https://wordcounter.net/6s66ym) who tossed me ideas and kept me motivated throughout the writing process! ❤❤❤

After being caught up in a meeting that had run entirely too late, Tony walked into his living room at just before five. Peter had been in the building, left to his own devices since half-past three and that seemed to have been just long enough for the kid to get bored. According to FRIDAY, the teenager had come in, gotten a snack, wandered around the lab for a while, and then meandered his way back up to the penthouse where he'd been bouncing from the television to his bedroom to the kitchen for quite some time. As such, he'd expected the boy to be waiting to greet him with enthusiasm but instead, he was met with an empty room. "Pete?" he called out as he went from room to room in search of his elusive mentee. Then just as he was about to ask FRIDAY where the kid had gone, he startled at a noise coming from behind him.

  
"Ha! I've got you, Mr. Stark!" Peter triumphantly shouted as he dropped down from the ceiling and grabbed his mentor's left hand in one swift motion.

  
Seeing as he was trying to catch his breath from where his heart had jumped up into his throat, it took several seconds for Tony to notice that the kid had clapped a pair of handcuffs onto one of his wrists. "What are you doing?" he asked with mild annoyance though there was clearly some underlying amusement in his tone. While he could do without the heart-attack-inducing jump-scare, he sort of lived for the moments that the kid acted like the childishly impulsive fifteen-year-old that he was.

  
Taking the opportunity to snap the other side of the handcuffs to his own right hand, Peter grinned. "Now you're stuck with me for the rest of the night."

  
"I was already stuck with you for the rest of the night. It's Friday," Tony deadpanned. Then he shook the arm that was now connected to his kid's and sighed. "How about you go ahead and get these off of me. I want to get out of this suit."

  
Disappointed by his mentor's lack of reaction, Peter sighed as well. "Fine... Where's the key?" he asked fully expecting the man to be able to point him in the right direction. Despite the fact that his workshop often looked as though it were in complete disarray the man always knew where everything was. He called it controlled chaos. Peter called it hypocritical. He wasn't allowed to leave his stuff strung out all over the lab.

  
Tony snapped his head to the side so that he could get a good look at the teenager he was currently and quite literally attached to. "What do you mean 'where's the key'? This is a toy, right, kid?" he stressed and when Peter's face drew up in confusion he remembered the stack of old equipment that had been piled up in the back of the lab. "Oh, God... where did you find these?" he further inquired, his tone seeping with concern.

  
Not really understanding what the big deal was, Peter shrugged his shoulders. Generally speaking, FRIDAY tended to keep tabs on him and tell him if he was getting into anything that could lead to a problem and no such warnings had come up. He was having trouble sorting out why the man looked so worried about it. "In the lab on that table in the back. There was a bunch of stuff on it and I found them in there. I thought it would be funny," he waveringly defended.

  
Earlier in the week Clint had cleaned out his garage and found a large collection of old SHIELD and Avenger's equipment. Seeing as he was still claiming retirement, he'd dropped it all off in the lab. However, Tony hadn't done much more than glance at the collection since then. He'd not seen any reason to rush into sorting it, half the items were from over six or seven years ago. It was outdated, save for a few little gems here and there. Including a pair of specially commissioned handcuffs. He'd never bothered looking for the key, he just hoped it was there. "Barton found all that stuff in his basement and dropped it off here for me to look through. You had better start praying that we actually find the key."

  
Completely undaunted by the potential lack of key, Peter scoffed. "It'll be fine, Mr. Stark. I can just snap them off if I need to. Super strength. Remember?" he said with confidence that quickly faded when his mentor's mouth turned into a thin straight line.

  
"I hate to break it to you, Strongman but these are made of vibranium. Even you can't snap these." Tony said with mild irritation. This was not how he'd planned on spending his evening.

  
"Oh," Peter replied, slightly taken aback. "-well, I suppose we should start looking for that key."

  
They spent over thirty minutes meticulously picking up and moving every single item off of the table and found nothing. Then they scoured the floor, looked around in the driveway where the things had been pulled out of the truck, and tried asking FRIDAY if she had any other ideas. There was no key. That left an extremely annoyed Tony making a phone call to Clint who took entirely too much pleasure in their plight. Though he did promise to look for the missing item and bring it to them. He seemed fairly confident that he would locate it and even if he couldn't, they learned that Natasha still had a matching pair. They could always get the key from her if need be. It would just take longer. Either way, there was a solution, there just didn't seem to be a timeline on when that solution would arrive.

  
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Stark. I didn't mean for this to happen. It seemed like a good idea at the time and--", Peter said for the umpteenth time since the handcuffs had been put in place.

  
Not prepared to listen to the kid apologize again, Tony held up his free hand and started talking over the boy's pleas. "-I get it. It was an accident. We've already got it figured out. Let's go back upstairs," he said, already turning towards the door. When Peter didn't move to follow him, his hand jerked against the metal. He grunted ever so quietly in annoyance.

  
Peter, of course, picked up on the small noise and was quick to start walking. He didn't question it when Tony led them back up to the penthouse but when man started down the hallway and began to turn into the master bedroom he came to a sudden halt. "Why are we going in there?" he asked because never once had he ever been into the man's bedroom. 

  
"I already told you I want out of this suit. I've been in it all day and I don't plan on wearing it all night," Tony exhaustedly replied. While a fine suit was nice for meetings and showing off in public, they were not comfortable by any means. He'd been counting down to the moment that he would be able to change into some jeans and a t-shirt only to have that moment delayed. He wasn't going to put it off any longer. They crossed the threshold and he hurried over to his drawers where he decided to skip the jeans altogether and pulled out some comfortable joggers instead.

  
Once he had everything together, Tony pulled off his tie and tossed it aside before popping open the top three buttons of his dress shirt, only to realize that he wouldn't be able to pull the material over his cuffed hand. He glanced down at the t-shirt he'd laid out and sighed. Apparently, the tank top he had on under his suit was going to have to do. That led to a quick search through his bedside table drawer to find a pair of scissors that he immediately used to start cutting through the sleeve of both the shirt and the jacket, much to Peter's horror. 

  
"What are you doing, Mr. Stark! You're ruining it!" the teenager shouted as the scissors began to slice through the deep blue suit jacket.

  
Tony scoffed. "I'm fairly confident that I can afford a new one, kiddo," he said, freeing himself from the restrictive clothing moments later. "Now, turn around," casually commanded as he kicked off his shoes and started to unbuckle his trousers. Peter spun to face the door without further prompting and as soon as Tony was dressed again they exited back into the living room.

  
"What are we going to do now?" , Peter asked, when they had paused in the middle of the room for a few seconds too long.

  
Tony glanced between his wrist and the rest of the room before allowing his eyes to fall back to the teenager beside him. "I don't know. What we usually do, I guess," he said with a defeated shrug of his shoulders. The kid was still looking overly apologetic, slightly guilty, and somewhat nervous. He sort of hoped that sticking to their regular routine would help with that. "Should we go to the lab?"

  
Rather than answering the question, Peter took a deep breath in through his nose and shifted on his feet. "You're not mad at me?"

  
"Mad? No. Annoyed? Maybe a little. It'll be fine though. Just a few hours," Tony honestly replied but when he saw the kid's posture slump even further he tried to make light of the situation. "Besides, it's not like it's unusual for you to be all up in my personal space when you're here, anyway," he teased, though he felt slightly guilty himself when the boy flinched at his words.

  
"I'm sorry," Peter groaned once more but it still didn't make him feel any better because he didn't really know of a good way to properly apologize for the predicament he'd gotten them into. What he did know was that he really needed to stop relying so heavily on an AI to tell him when he was about to do something stupid. 

  
"I didn't mean it like that. Come here," Tony said as he used his free arm to drag the kid around to his front and pull him into his chest. He'd not meant to make the kid feel worse. He knew the boy was already beating himself up over the entire ordeal and it wasn't his intent to perpetuate it. "Want to try to work in the lab some? We'll have to find something to do at one desk."

  
Peter nodded miserably and followed his mentor back down to the workshop where they took turns gathering up what they needed to work on their respective projects and laid it across one of the larger tables. They tried, for a while, to work simultaneously but every time one of Peter's tools got knocked off of the table he had to pull Tony down onto the floor with him to retrieve it. And every time Tony tried to use both hands to manipulate the hologram he was working with, it jerked Peter's arm away from what he was doing. 

  
After unsuccessfully being able to tighten a singular screw into his prototype, Peter gave up and sat back to watch Tony manipulate the latest version of the Iron Man armor. It wasn't as interesting as it once was. He'd seen the man do it a hundred times over at that point and he wasn't even adding anything cool. He was just tweaking things to make them more efficient. As such, he found himself inadvertently sighing and toying with some of the hardware that was lying around.

  
"Do you need something else to do?" Tony clipped when he could no longer take the sound of the bolt that the kid was spinning like a top on the table. The second one, actually. The first one had already slid across the surface and hit him in the thigh several minutes prior. 

  
Peter slapped his hand over the bolt to still it and looked up at his mentor with a frown. "I'm not sure what else I can do," he quietly groused. "I can't make anything work with one arm."

  
"You're right," Tony gave in. "This isn't working." He was an exceptional engineer but even so, he was unpracticed at working with one hand almost literally tied behind his back. He was sure there was a way but he didn't have the patience to sort it out at the moment. The problem was temporary. He'd have free use of both of his hands by the end of the night but until then, it looked like he was going to have to work a little bit harder to keep his equally restrained kid entertained. "Let's go back upstairs and watch a movie or play games or something."

  
"Awesome!" Peter chirped. As much as he loved the lab, it was currently more frustrating than fun. Playing games on Tony's giant screen TV sounded like the best possible alternative. In theory anyway. In practice, it proved to be a lot more difficult than anticipated.

  
"You know, you don't actually have to lean into the turns. We aren't using motion controls," Tony said with mild exasperation. He'd been elbowed no less than five times in the last twenty minutes by a kid with super-strength. He was sure his ribs were going to be sore for days. 

  
"Neither do you," Peter laughed while still making an effort to put as much distance between them as he could without having to let go of his own controller. It wasn't much. The chain between their two wrists couldn't have been any more than six inches. "-every time you round a corner, you almost yank the controller out of my hand."

  
For several seconds Tony tried to think about whether or not that was true but before he could decide, he was distracted by the low rumble coming from his kid's stomach. With their afternoon having had a late start, he's lost track of time. "I suppose that's my cue to order dinner," he said with a smirk.

  
Chinese take out was ordered and soon there were numerous boxes of various entrees spread across the coffee table. Peter grabbed the little cardboard container of his favorite chicken chow mein with a giddy smile. "I love this! Thank you!" he said as he snapped the two wooden chopsticks apart and shoved them into the tangle of greasy noodles.

  
"Do you want a fork?" Tony asked, gesturing towards the individually wrapped plasticware that was half-hidden under all of the little pouches of duck sauce.

  
"No. I like using chopsticks. Why?" Peter asked in return.

  
"Uh, because your right hand is currently attached to me and I'm not feeding you?" Tony replied with a quirk of his brow. He wasn't going to sit there and have his arm pulled every which way while trying to eat his own meal. Chopsticks weren't required. The kid could lefthandedly feed himself with a fork. It would be fine.

  
Peter's displayed nothing but puzzlement as he expertly pinched a wad of chow mein up with his chopsticks and placed it into his mouth without dropping so much as a sesame seed in the process. "It's fine. I can use my left hand, see?" he said before once again using his non-dominant hand to effortlessly collect his next bite. 

  
After ignoring his own dinner in favor of watching the kid eat his, Tony shook his head. "How are you doing that?" he asked, already trying to pull one of the larger pieces of pork out of his rice with his own left hand. He could do it but it was a slightly shakey process that required him to grab it a few times before having a firm enough hold to move it. Of course, part of that could have been because he was having to drag Peter's arm along with his but either way, the same level of dexterity just wasn't there.

  
"Talent," Peter replied with a smile and from there the two fell silent. There was a t.v. show playing quietly in the background but neither of them seemed to be invested in it. Tony stared down at his phone while Peter simply allowed his mind to wander, jumping from one train of thought to the next until he was struck with an interesting quandary. 

  
"Hey, Mr. Stark?", he said, waiting a few seconds for the man to acknowledge him, "If we're connected right now and we counted the handcuffs as part of our biology would that make us like a two-headed spider? Because technically between us we have four legs and four arms and- Wait do we count the arms that are connected as one arm or zero arms? Because depending on how we look at it we could have anywhere between six and eight limbs but saying that there's eight sound like more fun because, you know, spiders are kind of my thing..." he said, never noticing that Tony was blankly staring back at him as he continued to ramble without pause.

  
"-Hey Pete?" Tony amusedly interrupted once the teenager had circled back around to what the most accurate way to count their combined limbs would be. 

  
"Yeah?" Peter replied with enthusiasm, fully expecting his mentor to give him a second opinion. Though he should have known better by the way the man was looking at him alone. His eyes were sparkling with mirth while his mouth was twitching up into a reserved smile. 

  
"Just shut up," Tony chuckled and then shoved an eggroll into the boy's mouth.

  
Peter had just managed to get out an indignant 'hey!' when the elevator door opened and Pepper came walking into the room as if she were on a mission. "There you are!" she said sounding almost annoyed. "Why are you up here?" she asked looking between the two heads that had turned to look at her over the back of the couch.

  
"I live here?" Tony replied with humor.

  
Pepper rolled her eyes. "Yes but it's Friday and usually you two are in the lab all night so I-" she began, switching gears completely when she realized that Tony had changed out of his business attire into what amounted to his pajamas. "-why are you in a tank top and sweats? We have a conference call with that big tech company in Singapore in less than thirty minutes," she huffed without ever taking notice of the handcuffs that were connecting her fiance to the young man beside him. "You forgot about it didn't you."

  
"Can we reschedule?" Tony asked, trying to sound as apologetic as possible but Pepper looked far from appeased. 

  
"No, Tony. We can't reschedule this," she replied with a deep, tired sigh. "Do you have any idea how hard it was to get them to even consider merging with us?"

  
"Well, you can do it without me. You're the CEO," Tony returned without missing a beat. Anything that needed to be discussed from a business standpoint was no longer his territory. He'd given that up years ago, he wasn't even sure why his presence was required.

  
"Yes," Pepper agreed with an exasperated nod of her head, "-but you're the face of the company. You need to be there. Get up, get dressed," she began to instruct.

  
"-but the kid-" Tony tried to hurriedly reply.

  
"-can surely entertain himself for an hour. Right, Peter?" Pepper interjected, switching her attention to the teenager who had been being unusually quiet since she'd walked in. Typically, he jumped up to greet her. 

  
"Uh..." Peter nervously replied as his eyes darted between his mentor and the woman who seemed to be waiting for him to give her a much more articulate response. He tried to wrack his brain for the right words to say but 'I sort of handcuffed myself to Mr. Stark, sorry' didn't sound like a very good explanation. Thankfully his mentor decided to have mercy on him and take over.

  
"Honey, You don't understand," Tony said as he miserably raised his arm up, leaving Peter's to limply dangle below it. That had led into a long-winded narrative that left Pepper looking at them both with her arms crossed over her chest and a gleeful smile across her face. Tony wanted to be miffed by her reaction but instead, he took it as a good sign that he wasn't going to be in too much trouble for missing the meeting. "-anyway, as you can see, I can't leave the kid up here to entertain himself nor can I put a suit on. This is it. This is how I'll be spending my entire evening," he finished with a flourish of his hand.

  
After giving it some thought, Pepper smiled and nodded her head in Tony's direction. "Peter's your intern right?" she asked, not really offering any room for an answer, "He can come with you and as far as the suit goes? Give me five minutes," she said, disappearing down the hall before Tony could question her. Though she returned moments later with the ruined shirt and jacket in one hand and container of safety pins in the other.

  
Looking less than impressed by the presumed solution, Tony squinted his eyes and tried to cross his arms over his chest. When the motion had Peter's arm coming along with his he grunted in frustration and opted to point at her instead. "You know, I do realize that I tend to give off an 'I don't care what people say about me vibe' but I am not going to sit through a major business deal while wearing a suit that looks like it was designed by Edward Scissorhands and co," he firmly stated, ignoring the way Peter was giggling beside him. 

  
"No one will even notice if you sit still," Pepper reasoned causing Peter to go from giggling to outright laughing. He couldn't imagine Tony talking without using his hands. 'It's called body language, Pete. Hand gestures help you communicate more effectively,' the man had told him and even though that made perfect sense, he still found the exaggerated motions sort of hilarious. 

  
A few grumbled complaints later and all three of them were shuffling into Pepper's office where she carefully set up Tony's camera to show just his face and shoulders. He complained that you could still see some of the safety pins catching the light but Pepper insisted that it would be fine. There would be at least six chat windows open and everyone was going to be far more focused on the conversation than what he was wearing.

  
The conference call started moments later and Peter sat as still and quiet as possible beside his mentor. For a while, he listened to the negotiations but when things started going over his head he shifted in his seat so that he could get his phone out of his pocket. Tony glared at him when the motion caused his own hand to slip off of his lap but causing him to hurriedly sit back down and began playing a few games. 

  
Though, his attention went back to the conversation when it sounded like things were becoming tense. Pepper's voice had taken on more authority and Tony was starting to grumble under his breath. Then it happened. In his frustration, Tony threw both of his hands up in the air, snapping Peter's up right along with them. Everyone on the call froze and suddenly them noticing the safety pins was the least of anyone's concerns.

  
Despite Pepper's best efforts to gloss right past the fact that Tony had another human being handcuffed to him, the CEO of the other company wasn't going to be detoured. "What was that?" the older man asked, leaning in more towards the screen as if that might shed some light on the situation. "Was that- Is there someone else there?"

  
Tony closed his eyes and less than gently tugged the kid into the frame. Peter smiled and waved hello with his free hand while Tony took a cleansing breath. "This is my," he started, hesitating as he tried to decide what to call the boy. Saying that he was currently handcuffed to his intern would raise some questions. Then again, calling Peter his kid would also raise some questions because his life was highly publicized. If he had a child, people would know about it. Though the questions that could come from calling the teenager his would be far less offensive than the ones that might arise if he referred to him as an employee of any variety. He finally settled on the 'less is more' ideal. "This is Peter."

  
Of course, it couldn't be left at just that and the next ten minutes of the meeting was spent listening to Pepper try to explain why Peter was connected to Tony. She tried to keep it as nondescript as possible while spinning it into a humorous anecdote and thankfully it worked. Everyone from the other office laughed it off before the meeting went back to something more serious and oddly more successful. It seemed that the lighthearted break had cleared everyone's heads and the call ended on an extremely positive note. 

  
"I don't know how but that seemed to go well," Tony mused as his fiance began to remove the dozens of pins that were holding his dress clothes in place. 

  
"I wasn't expecting to have to explain to a group of strangers why you had a teenaged boy stuck to you," Pepper returned with a grin, "-but yes, it did go very well."

  
And once Tony had been freed from his suit for the second time that evening, he and Peter returned to the penthouse while Pepper stayed behind to work on some contracts. That left the two of them trying to once again find something that they could do while being forced to remain so close together. Of course, the suggestion of movies came up and that seemed like an easy enough activity to do while attached at the wrist. Mostly because even without the challenge of handcuffs the kid would be in his personal space. That and movie nights were a fairly common weekend activity anyway. They would work, eat dinner in the lab and then return to the penthouse to relax until Peter decided to put himself to bed. Or more often, fell asleep on the couch with his head on Tony's lap or shoulder. 

  
At Peter's insistence, popcorn was popped and cans of soda were lined up along the table before they settled into the latest Sci-fi flick to be released for streaming. As expected, Peter was leaning heavily into Tony's side, though the positioning was less natural than normal. Their linked hands rested on a knee rather than Tony's arm stretching around Peter's shoulders. It was fine though. The film was a fairly good distraction. Even so, Tony couldn't help but wonder when Clint was going to get there. A glance at his phone revealed no new messages so he sent one of his own. When that yielded no results he sighed and hoped it was because the man was still looking. 

  
When the first movie ended, Tony went ahead and started the next one. It was more interesting than the last and as a result, he found himself instantly drawn into the plot. Though the same couldn't be said for the kid beside him. Within the first fifteen minutes, the boy was tapping on his leg trying to gain his attention. "What is it, kiddo? he distractedly inquired. His attention was still mostly focused on the television. 

  
Peter sat up and nervously bounced his leg for a second or two before looking towards his mentor with remorse. "Well, I know it's not a good time but um- I need to go to the bathroom," he said, bracing himself for the string of complaints that he was certain would follow. Though none came. The man looking completely unaffected.

  
"Alright," Tony breathed out, having long since accepted the eventuality of the kid needing to use the bathroom. He knew it was going to be awkward but he also knew that there would be no avoiding it. If anything, he'd been waiting that particular proclamation to come up. "Let's go."

  
"What? No!", Peter nearly shouted before quickly bringing his tone to something a bit more affable. "I mean, I was just wondering how much longer until Mr. Barton's going to get here?"

  
Once again, peering at the lack of messages on his phone, Tony raised a hand in defeat. "I have no idea, Pete," he said and then began typing out yet another text requesting that the archer, at minimum, let him know what was going on. "Could be two minutes, could be two hours."

  
Even though that was not what Peter wanted to hear, he nodded his head and leaned back onto the couch. "Maybe he'll be here soon. I'll just hold it."

  
"Sure," Tony dubiously replied. He, for one, wasn't really counting on Clint showing up anytime in the near future. "Just let me know when you change your mind," he added before unpausing the movie. However, it didn't seem nearly as interesting as it had when it started. His eyes kept falling back to his phone. The prolonged lack of communication was making him antsy. Though just as he was starting to consider whether or not he should go ahead and call Natasha the device began to buzz and the name 'Barton' began to scroll across the backlit screen.

  
"Please tell me that you've found the key," he pleaded in lieu of a greeting and at first he thought the man had dialed him by mistake. All he could hear was some rustling in the background. 

  
"Yeah, yeah. I've got it right here," Clint replied after a few beats too many. "Now I just need to find my own keys."

  
"How are you this unorganized?" Tony pressed with aggravation. "Surely SHIELD expected you to-"

  
"-Yeah, well, I'm not working for SHIELD anymore and- Hey! There they are," Clint interrupted, going from distracted to chipper in a matter of seconds. "I'm on my way."

  
"Great. Hurry up. I want my hand back," Tony replied but in reality, the call had been disconnected before he'd really begun. He just didn't want Peter to know he'd been hung up on.

  
Within the next hour, Clint arrived and Tony had FRIDAY point the man towards his lab. At the same time, he hurried himself and his kid towards the elevator to meet him. When they walked in the archer was already there smugly spinning the ring that held the desired key around his finger. 

  
"Hand me that before you drop it," Tony snapped. The idea that the key that had just been located could go missing again in an instant was putting him on edge. Best case scenario they'd find it quickly. Worst case scenario, he and Peter would end up spending the remainder of the night bound to one another. Sleeping would be impossible. For him, at least. He had no doubt that Peter would sleep. He, on the other hand, would end up spending the entire night getting kicked in the shins. He was sure of it.

  
"Ask nicely and maybe I will," Clint sing-songed in response, clearly enjoying having the upper hand.

  
Not wanting to delay their freedom any longer, Tony gave in. Marginally. "Give me the key. Please," he hissed through his clenched jaw before making threats so low under his breath that, thankfully, only Peter could hear him. "-before I call a suit and have it painfully removed from your person."

  
"You know, I never thought I would see the day that Tony Stark would be asking for my help, let alone asking me 'please'" Clint mused and then casually slipped his hands and the key into his pockets "I kind of want to just savor this moment for a while."

  
Unable to keep quiet any longer, Peter finally snapped. "Can you please just get it off already!" he growled in a tone, that under any other circumstances, he would never use on an adult but he was getting irritable. He'd assumed he would be freed the moment they'd entered the lab and at that point, he desperately needed to be freed.

  
Clint raised his eyebrows but didn't respond right away. Part of him was sort of waiting for a standard-issue, Peter apology. When none came he huffed a laugh. "You know, you're awfully snippy for someone who's freedom is literally in my hands right now," he said, teasingly pulling the key out of his pocket and gripping it tightly in his fist. 

  
"Give the kid a break," Tony defended. "He's had to pee for the last hour."

  
"Hour _and a half_ ," Peter curtly corrected before looking beseechingly towards the man who didn't seem to be in any hurry to release him. "Come on Mr. Barton," he whined, "I really need to _go_."

  
"Fine" Clint conceded, then placing the key into Tony's outstretched hand. But only for Peter's sake. If it wasn't for his pleas he would have happily continued to taunt Tony for a while longer. It was nice to feel like he was the one in charge for once. 

  
With the key now in his possession, Tony moved to unlock his kid first and the second the handcuffs clicked open, the boy practically cheered. "There you go," he said with a smile. 

  
"Oh, thank God!" Peter shouted and began to rub at his newly liberated wrist. Then without warning, he took off towards the bathroom shouting, "Be right back!" over his shoulder.

  
Tony chuckled and unlocked his own arm before turning towards a still amused looking Clint. They exchanged a few words and by the time Peter had returned, the other man was already announcing that he needed to get back home to his waiting family. 

  
"Thank you for coming!" Peter said as Clint walked out the door and then turned to his mentor with a smile. "What are we going to do now?" he asked with enthusiasm.

  
"Oh, the first thing we're going to do it to make sure this never happens again," Tony said seriousness.

  
"Oh? How, how are you going to do that, Mr. Stark?" Peter nervously replied. Even though the man was smiling, there was a tiny niggling at the back of his head that told him that he was about to lose lab privileges or something. It wouldn't be surprising. He knew he'd messed up. 

  
"Like this," Tony said as he reached out to give his nervous kid a gentle pan on the shoulder. "FRIDAY, dear? New Protocol. The kid isn't allowed to touch anything in the lab that isn't his without my expressed permission. Let's call it-" he said before pausing momentarily in thought. "Oh, I know! Let's call it the Baby Proofing Protocol," he eagerly declared. "Keep everything locked up nice and tight so that Spider-kids don't get into things they shouldn't get into."

  
"No..." Peter whined.

  
"Yes..." Tony drew out in response. Then he took his kid by the shoulder and started to turn him towards where they had attempted to work together earlier in the evening. "Now let's go celebrate our two-handedness by getting some actual work done before it gets any later," he said, teasingly waving the boy towards his own work station. "Get your stuff and get away from me you clingy little nuisance."

  
Peter smiled back and dutifully grabbed his prototype with one hand and offered a mock salute with his other. "You got it, Mr. Stark!" he said.

And hour later, when Tony suggested that they go back upstairs to sit too close together while finishing their movie, it was because his kid looked tired. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was suddenly missing his shadow. He was simply being responsible and no one would ever be able to convince him otherwise. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come shout at me on [tumblr!](https://yes-i-am-happyaspie.tumblr.com%22)


End file.
